| A lot of people are grouping us and Netflix together. And I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again—besides both being media companies and being primarily subscription revenue companies, that’s kind of where the similarities end for me... It's just vastly different businesses. |
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| Trombone Shorty at Mardi Gras World, New Orleans, Feb. 19, 2022. |
| (Erika Goldring/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“A lot of people are grouping us and Netflix together. And I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again—besides both being media companies and being primarily subscription revenue companies, that’s kind of where the similarities end for me... It's just vastly different businesses.”
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- Daniel Ek, Spotify CEO
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| rantnrave:// |
Yellow Netflixer Beat
Is SPOTIFY the next NETFLIX, the one thing no one wants to be right now? Depends who you ask. The message of the day on Spotify's Q1 earnings call Wednesday was a loud no. "It's just vastly different businesses," DANIEL EK said. For example, the CEO said, Spotify is a platform while Netflix is a content creator—which, as Variety pointed out, overlooks the vast amount of money Spotify has spent to acquire and create podcasts, which in many ways has become the company's primary business. It also appears to overlook, as Financial Times noted (paywall), the many times Spotify and its associates have directly compared itself to Netflix in the past, such as, for example, "likening Spotify’s podcast push to Netflix’s initial move into streaming video." Not to mention the company's guidance on this very day that it will have a higher-than-expected operating loss in Q2, nearly 200 million euros, largely because of its spending on original content.
That all said, there were plenty of hits on Wednesday's earnings call. Monthly active users are up. Average revenue per user is up. Total revenues are in line with expectations. Music Business Worldwide, which had questions for Spotify the day before the earnings were reported, headlined its story on the earnings call, "No Netflix Problems Here: Spotify Added 2m Net Subscribers in Q1." But you're only as good as your last hit and there was one glaring miss, and it had to do with those 2m net subscribers. Expectations had been the company would add 3m net subs. The one thing no subscription service wants to do right now, in the wake of Netflix's plunging numbers, is come up short on subscription numbers, and Spotify did. Spotify can protest, fairly, that pulling out of Russia cost it 1.5m subs. But its Q2 forecast isn't any better: It predicts subscriptions will continue to grow, but this time to a target 2 million below what investors were looking for. Spotify stock, already having a bad year, took another body blow Wednesday.
And still, digital music analyst MARK MULLIGAN, who isn't one to pull punches, wrote on his Music Industry Blog that "Spotify did well to not suffer the same fate as Netflix." But that wasn't the end of the sentence. Spotify "was not," he continued, "able to buck the broader trend affecting the entertainment market: the attention recession." Translation: As the pandemic winds down, so, too, might the entertainment boom of the past couple years.
"The future is always uncharted," Mulligan concluded, "but especially so now."
Follow the Crowd
GOLDENVOICE president PAUL TOLLETT told the LA Times he decided to scrap the vaccine and mask requirements for COACHELLA and this weekend's STAGECOACH after going to the SUPER BOWL in February: "I got there and no one was wearing a mask in the place. No one. So I took mine off." That's when he decided his two April fests should go "back to normal," he told the paper. The policy change was announced on social media on Feb. 15, two days after the football game.
Masks, which were optional, were a rare sight over the two Coachella weekends, and the nine cities that make up the Coachella Valley reported a 77 percent uptick in Covid cases after the first weekend and another 21 percent bump after the second. But it's too soon, local officials say, to know whether that's a cause for alarm. Those percentages are based on low raw numbers: There were 109 new cases reported in the valley the week before Coachella, 193 during the week one and 233 during week two. And it might take another two weeks to know if there was a serious outbreak that can be attributed to the festival, a county spokesperson told the local daily, the Desert Sun. And, of course, if the virus was spreading among festivalgoers and performers, they may be thousands of miles away by the time they get sick.
Stagecoach, meanwhile, has lost one of its marquee performers for this Friday's opening day. BRANDI CARLILE, like a growing number of artists on the road this spring, has Covid.
Rest in Peace
Electronic music pioneer KLAUS SCHULZE, who played in early versions of Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel but is best known for his own lengthy catalog of synthesized music that glided back and forth across the borders of ambient, new age, techno, prog rock and more, and influenced generations of artists and producers. "I cannot tell anything about 'the history' of the Moog," Schulze told an interviewer in 2014, even though he was closely associated with that iconic synthesizer brand. "It's me, the artist, the musician, who has the idea for the music and who plays this music. The instruments are just the tools." Schulze scored several films and was influential in that realm as well. Hans Zimmer, a fan, interpolated a Schulze piece called "Frank Herbert" in his Oscar-winning score for last year's "Dune." His final album, "Deus Arrakis," is due in June... Bassist RANDY RAND, a founding member of hair metal band Autograph.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Music Industry Blog |
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| The attention recession has hit Spotify too |
| By Mark Mulligan |
| While Spotify did well to not suffer the same fate as Netflix, it was not able to buck the broader trend affecting the entertainment market: the attention recession. |
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Spotify |
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| The Evolution of Music Curation with Saidah Blount |
| By Jeff Yasuda and Saidah Blount |
| Have you ever wondered how your favorite playlist was made? Do you miss the days of mixed tapes? Join us on this nostalgic journey with Saidah Blount to learn why music discovery is so important, how human curation provides warmth that technology simply cannot, and why context is so important to content. |
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Twenty Thousand Hertz |
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| Twenty Thousand Hertz: Ta-da! It’s Windows |
| By Dallas Taylor, Jensen Harris and Matthew Bennett |
| Over the years, Microsoft has made at least ten iconic startup sounds for Windows—from the triumphant “Ta-da!” of Windows 3.1, to the ambient chime that Brian Eno crafted for Windows 95, to the orchestral sweep of Windows XP. In this episode, we explore the creation of the classic Windows startup sounds, and what each one says about Microsoft’s evolving technology. |
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Rhett Shull |
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| Why New Bands Don't Play Gibson Guitars |
| By Rhett Shull |
| Gibson has been making guitars for over 100 years, but after some rocky years, has it finally lost its appeal with young musicians? |
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Dallas Observer |
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| Un-glam Rock: Parents in Music Share the Joy and Struggle of Raising Kids -- and Hell Onstage |
| By Diamond Rodrigue |
| On a sunny Sunday afternoon in April, Grady Don Sandlin walks toward the patio of Dan’s Silverleaf in Denton, forgetting he’s due on stage with country cover band Straight Tequila Night at that exact moment. His kids, 2-year-old Rita and 7-year-old Willie, have kept him and his wife, Jessica, more than a little busy for the first part of the concert. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music of the day |
| “Rise Above” |
| Ibeyi ft. Berwyn |
| Black Flag cover, from "Spell 31," due May 6 from XL Recordings. |
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| Music | Media |
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| “REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask ‘why?’” |
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